Having worked for years on different projects concerned with artistic knowledge production, for "Dreams of Art Spaces Collected" we agreed to focus on non-profit project spaces, artist run spaces or art associations. Making obvious from the beginning that we most certainly did not intend to work on an objective representation of these spaces in Europe, we avoided focusing on the traditional centres and commenced our meetings and conversations in Ljubljana and Istanbul. The collected statements of artists, curators and theorists provide a pool of knowledge, which for us also implies an assemblage of a growing reference field for our own artistic projects.

Using the snowball effect for the selection process seemed to be very efficient. We unpacked already existing connections and asked our colleagues and artist friends from different countries for their recommendations. After expending the means for two research trips, we recorded a lot of statements from contributors travelling through Berlin. The extended narratives provide space to unfold more complex trains of thought between theoretical approaches, questions about institutions, the representation and the mediation of art, very specific locations and spaces, experience, practical know-how and test runs of other ideas and practices.

Moira Zoitl and Dorothee Albrecht

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